


Come Over and Stay

by Kaoru_chibimaster



Series: He Who Makes No Sense [11]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: AU, Fluff, Humor, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF, but still technically there, tifa cid and ven are more mentioned than shown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-08 07:06:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13453038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaoru_chibimaster/pseuds/Kaoru_chibimaster
Summary: I guess I just…don’t worry about it. It’s not important.





	Come Over and Stay

**Author's Note:**

> Me: *Cloud/Zack shipping intensifies* This series is so self-indulgent, guys. Let me ship.

“Cloud’s Delivery Service—”

“I’m calling you on your personal phone, you nerd!”

Cloud pulled the cell phone away from his ear, frowning as he felt his face start to flush slightly. It had become a habit to answer every phone call with ‘Cloud’s Delivery Service’ after he’d gotten one too many complaints over answering his work phone with ‘what’. Unfortunately, it meant he tended to answer his personal phone with it too, and his friends held it over his head constantly. And no one poked more fun at Cloud than…

“Zack. What’s up?” Cloud asked, placing the phone against his ear again. His thumb tapped the volume down quickly so that he wouldn’t get blasted in the eardrum again.

“Hey, so…how’s everybody?”

A familiar question. Zack’s work took him all over: the old overseas coliseum, to the gleaming streets of Daybreak Town, to the very City of Light Cloud lived in. That was how they met, after all. Cloud had spent his life doing things he wasn’t very proud of until he was brought in by Leon and the gang. With help from him and a childhood friend of Cloud’s, Tifa, he’d set up his own small business and things went up from there. Then he’d met Zack. A fighter. Met him through Tifa, specifically, but Zack wandered much in the same way Cloud used to, only his job was most certainly something to be proud of. He taught people the way of the sword, something many didn’t appreciate in the current age of technology. Nor was a skill many needed but, much to Cloud’s surprise, many wanted to learn. This was how Zack managed to keep his job, after all. Unfortunately, it didn’t give him much room to settle down. It wasn’t easy agreeing to a long distance relationship with Zack, especially when they’d only been dating a year by that point, but Cloud wouldn’t sit back and accept the idea of losing Zack either. And so when Zack moved to Twilight Town and met up with a dojo master there, a man named Eraqus, he’d started planting roots and Cloud took it upon himself to keep watering the ones planted in Radiant Garden. He didn’t allow himself to become introverted again, and Zack made sure of it, constantly asking how everyone else was doing despite the fact that he could and did frequently communicate with them himself.

Cloud didn’t mind. He loved his friends. When they weren’t driving him up a wall.

And he certainly wasn’t opposed to outing their shenanigans to his boyfriend. “You really want to know?”

“Uh oh. I know that tone in your voice. What happened?” Zack asked, his voice amused.

The proper question really should have been ‘what didn’t happen’. Because Cloud couldn’t find a single thing the lunatics he called friends didn’t get up to. He wasn’t sure if he should start with the minor chemical explosion Yuffie started in her school or the nut case that challenged Tifa to a duel and got thrown into a wall. Or maybe the sight of Cid in a feud with an old man, both of them brandishing cleaning supplies at one another. Or that time Aerith took Cloud to a dress fitting…and made him wear the dress.

Okay, maybe he wouldn’t bring up that last point. The rest he filled Zack in on though, smiling fondly at every chuckle heard through the receiver. He really missed Zack. Sure he’d get visits every few weekends but…

What did that compare to having him always?

“Come over and stay.”

“…Come again?”

Cloud rolled his eyes, both at the response and at himself. He hadn’t meant to say it, but now it was out and he wasn’t sure if he regretted it.

“Come. Over. And. Stay,” he repeated slowly.

“I—Cloud…”

“No, listen,” he interrupted. “I know your job moves you around a lot and I’m not saying you should quit. And…no, never mind. I guess I just…don’t worry about it. It’s not important.”

And there it went. Cloud’s argument started out confident and determined and yet quickly fizzled. He wasn’t even sure what to say. Trap Zack in a life he didn’t want? A life he didn’t need? Tell him to settle down, get married and have kids? Cloud wasn’t his mother.

“No.”

“…Huh?”

“No,” Zack repeated. “It is important. It’s important because you’re telling me what you want and I should be listening. Don’t dismiss your own feelings like that, Cloud. You want me to go back to Radiant Garden and stay.”

And Cloud didn’t know if that was an answer. Zack was taking it seriously, but what did that make his decision? Would he really move back to Radiant Garden? Cloud doubted he’d even be staying in Twilight Town much longer, as often as he moved around. Why would he go backwards?

“And…are you?” Cloud asked, a long pause prefacing his words. He didn’t want to wait for that answer to come to him.

“Hmm… Let me tell you something. It’s a nice place out here…”

Cloud sighed. Zack liked keeping him in suspense, just to tease him. Now though? It wasn’t teasing. Cloud didn’t know what it was. It might as well have been stalling. He braced himself for a negative answer.

“Nice and homey, the people are great, the food is amazing and that sunset. God, I wish I could show you that sunset. And Eraqus has been pretty good to me. So have Terra, Aqua and Ven. But I think we’re all in agreement I’m ready to move on.”

Right. Just as Cloud thought.

“So I asked them to help me gather my stuff. I talked it over with Eraqus and he’s gonna find me a place where I can stay put and really start building a dojo of my own. I’m gonna really start putting down roots. And…”

Cloud’s shoulders tensed. He wanted to feel relaxed, wanted to reassure himself that it wasn’t a big deal. It was though. For him. It felt like it.

“And I wanna do it where my loved ones are. Where _you_ are. So I’m actually kinda glad you asked me to stay with you, ‘cause I’m kinda gonna need a place to stay anyway,” Zack laughed sheepishly.

He was so damn lucky Cloud loved him, or he’d throw that phone through the wall.

“ _All you had to do was say yes, you overdramatic pain in my ass,_ ” Cloud grunted out through gritted teeth. And here he thought he’d be rejected, only to continue waiting for Zack like some love-sick idiot.

Zack, of course, only started laughing.

“Sorry, sorry! I couldn’t help it, you’re just so easy to tease! Anyway, I’m packing up at my place, so I’ll be over this weekend. I’ll even let you meet some of my Twilight Town peeps! A few are coming with me, so…you might want to prepare for that.”

Great. Cloud’s heard more than enough about the friends Zack had made in Twilight Town. Some of them were alright but…Cloud wasn’t sure what to make of the rest. He’d already seen Zack on the news chasing down some guy standing on top of a tram, flipping the bird at the pedestrians on the sidewalk. That wasn’t to mention the daily stories Zack told Cloud of Twilight Town’s general oddities: the moaning tunnels and the weird fires starting up in the middle of the night and the haunted mansion that supposedly ate people. Yeah. Cloud didn’t know if he wanted to meet the people that lived in that nonsense.

But if it was for Zack…

“I know that silence. Don’t worry, they won’t be that bad. I’ll try to bring along the mostly normal ones,” Zack said. He pulled away from the phone to ask ‘right, Ven?’ at someone and Cloud couldn’t hear the answer very clearly but he guessed from the tone that ‘Ven’ didn’t like being only considered _mostly_ normal. Cloud would take mostly normal. That was his friends in a nutshell anyway. And speaking of…

“If you want to mix in the Twilight Town crazy with the Radiant Garden crazy, be my guest. Just keep them out of my apartment.”

“Ha! Will do.”

“Look, I gotta go pick Yuffie up since Tifa’s staying late at her job and Leon’s not allowed to go near the high school since The Incident—” Cloud was not going to elaborate on that incident. Not again. “—so you’ll have to give me the rest of the details in a bit.” Cloud wanted to be ready for this. It wasn’t just a weekend visit anymore. His apartment would become a place for two and there needed to be room for Zack’s things. And Cloud would admit…he was a little giddy and wanted to make sure his place was perfect for Zack, despite knowing that Zack wouldn’t care what state his apartment was in.

“You got it,” Zack said. “Love you.”

And, as a smile came to Cloud’s face, that was why Cloud could admit to his giddiness. Those words never failed to elate him.

“Love you too, Zack.”

“Oh _groooss_!”

Cloud’s phone snapped shut in surprise as he looked up. His own little business was just above Tifa’s, in the same building but on different floors. The younger kids liked to hang around downstairs when they got off school, but occasionally they’d pop their heads up to talk to Cloud. That wasn’t what was so surprising. What was so surprising was that Yuffie was standing in the doorway to Cloud’s messy office instead hanging out in the front of her school where Cloud was literally just about to drive to pick her up.

“…How the hell’d you get here?”

Diz High School wasn’t anywhere near the business district of Radiant Garden, so it wasn’t like she walked. Or maybe she did. She was crazy enough for it.

“What’dya mean how the hell did I get here? Cid picked me up and dumped me here,” Yuffie answered, poking a thumb back in the general direction behind her, liking meaning Cid was downstairs. Which was also weird because Cloud was supposed to pick Yuffie up, not Cid. Unless…

“Did Tifa tell him to pick you up?”

“Uh, duh? You think he’d go anywhere near the high school otherwise?”

Just before Cloud answered, his phone rang again as if on cue.

“Cloud’s Delivery Serv—uh, I mean…hello?”

Yuffie snorted. The person on the other end snorted. Cloud was sure even Cid snorted from downstairs.

“Oh hey, you actually caught yourself! I’m proud!”

“Give it a rest, Tifa.”

She chuckled over the line. “Sorry, couldn’t help it. You’re easy to tease.”

So Cloud had heard…

“Anyway, I wanted to let you know before you left that Cid picked Yuffie up. Apparently he needed to pick up a few old computers from the community college, so he got her on the way.”

“Oh.” Cloud nodded silently at Yuffie then and she bounded back down the stairs, mostly likely in search of a snack she could swipe.

“So…did you hear about Zack?”

“Yeah, he just called me and told me. How’d you hear?”

“I got a text from Aerith who heard it from Sora, who heard it from Kairi, who heard it from Lea, who heard it from Roxas, who heard it from Ven.”

That was…needlessly complicated but Cloud nodded along anyway.

“You excited?” she asked, voice bubbly with her own cheer.

“I am.” More than he’d admit.

“I hope so because this weekend we’re all having visitors.”

“Yeah. I heard that part too.” That was…not so exciting. But Cloud would put up with it. He’d met Sora and Kairi before, at least, during a visit to Kairi’s family. And he knew Lea was originally from Radiant Garden but never met him personally. The rest…he’d be getting to know soon enough. Fun.

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep them all occupied while you and Zack run off and elope.”

“Tifa.”

“What?”

“Stop reading so many romance novels.”

He hung up. Sighing, Cloud headed down the stairs to make sure Yuffie wasn’t destroying Tifa’s kitchen. Cid waved a hand at him from where he sat in his corner, tinkering with the computers he must’ve picked up from the college. Something crashed from behind the bar.

Yup. Only three in the afternoon and already things were chaotic. It wasn’t going to get better with a bunch of Twilight Town visitors. It didn’t really matter too much though. Cloud would be at his apartment moving Zack in. That was good enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> These loony bins are going to wreak so much havoc in Radiant Garden. _Especially_ Vanitas.


End file.
